Discussion

 Give an example of how contingencies of reinforcement operate when we make discriminations in our everyday lives. 

The readings

 

1. Science and Human Behavior:  Chapter 16 & Chapter 18
2. About Behaviorism: Chapter 7 & 8
3. From a Behavioral Point of View: Chapters 5 & 7

289 COMMENTARY

ACHIEVING PARITY: THE ROLE OF
AUTOMATIC REINFORCEMENT

DAVID C. PALMER

SMITH COLLEGE

The central insight of Horne and Lowe’s
article is the importance of the role played by
the discriminative effects of one’s speech
upon one’s self. Informed by this insight,
Horne and Lowe provide a parsimonious and
coherent interpretation of the behavior said
to show equivalence relations, exploiting only
established concepts of behavior analysis. I
am enthusiastic about both the goals and ac­
complishments of the article and therefore
will confine myself to suggesting an elabora­
tion or refinement of one or two ideas lightly
covered by the authors, particularly the role
of automatic reinforcement in the shaping of
the speaker’s behavior (cf. Skinner, 1957, p.
164, 1979, p. 283; Sundberg, 1980;Vaughan
& Michael, 1982).

Speech is special in that we stimulate our­
selves in just the same way and at the same
moment we stimulate others. This is a char­
acteristic not entirely shared by sign lan­
guage, because the appearance of a sign var­
ies with the location of the viewer; typically
the speaker and the listener view signs from
opposite sides. Although subtle, this differ­
ence should impair the acquisition of naming
in sign language relative to that of speech,
because listener behavior is under the control
of stimuli that the speaker can never quite
reproduce. Moreover, we might expect more
idiosyncrasies, or accents, among signers than
among speakers.

The auditory feedback from one’s speech
can play a special role for a speaker who is
already a competent listener. Horne and
Lowe allude to the discriminative control that
such feedback exerts over orienting behavior
and note that this control contributes greatly
to our understanding of performance in re­
search on equivalence classes. They also refer
to the potential reinforcing function that

Correspondence concerning this commentary should
be addressed to the author at the Department of Psy­
chology, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts
01063 (E-mail: dcpalmer@science.smith.edu).

such feedback can provide, assuming that the
verbal stimuli already function as conditioned
reinforcers. A stimulus may be automatically
reinforcing if it has been paired with uncon­
ditioned reinforcers; thus, as Horne and
Lowe observe, “the sounds and words uttered
by parents may function as potent classically
conditioned stimuli that have strong emo­
tional effects on the child so that when she
hears her own replication of these vocal pat­
terns she generates stimuli that have similarly
strong reinforcing consequences” (p. 198).
Presumably, then, there may be a reinforcing
effect of hearing one’s self say, “Good job,”
because such expressions from parents are
likely to serve a reinforcing function.

Horne and Lowe do not make much of this
point, and rightly so: We would expect only
a relatively few verbal stimuli to function as
conditioned reinforcers. Moreover, presum­
ably one quickly discriminates between the
praise of another and one’s own; the former
is far more precious. The reinforcing effec­
tiveness of verbal stimuli quickly becomes
conditional on other variables.

However, the feedback from one’s own
speech plays a different sort of reinforcing
function that I will argue is far more impor­
tant in the shaping and development of ver­
bal behavior. One’s own utterances can shape
and maintain one’s behavior, not because of
the specific stimulus properties of the verbal
stimuli, but because of the parity of such stim­
uli with practices of the verbal community.
That is, a speaker who is already an accom­
plished listener can detect when he or she
conforms or deviates from typical verbal prac­
tices. Under most circumstances, people find
parity of their speech with that of others to
be reinforcing and deviations from parity to
be punishing. The child who says “Tarry
me!” does not have to receive explicit differ­
ential consequences from the verbal com­
munity when she eventually learns to utter
“Carry me!” She knows instantly that she has

mailto:dcpalmer@science.smith.edu

290 COMMENTARY

achieved parity, because, as Horne and Lowe
observe, her repertoire as listener typically
precedes her repertoire as speaker.

Achieving parity is a conceptually awkward
sort of reinforcer. It is not a stimulus. It is a
particular kind of response, a recognition
that one has conformed. It is difficult to mea­
sure, even to operationalize; thus, in our in­
terpretations of the acquisition of verbal be­
havior it is seldom given the emphasis it
deserves. But, although difficult to measure,
the reinforcement is real enough. The effects
of achieving, or failing to achieve, parity are
particularly conspicuous in endeavors in
which social reinforcement is clearly absent
or irrelevant. The boy who tries to imitate the
sound of a locomotive, an airplane, or a vac­
uum cleaner does not need differential feed­
back from his parents or siblings; the child
who picks out the tune to “Mary Had a Little
Lamb” on a xylophone may succeed without
instruction or approval; the girl trying to
learn how to wiggle her ears or to wink profits
more from the mirror than from a tutor. In
each case, the person already knows what the
behavior should look like or sound like, and
any behavioral variant that approaches parity
is strongly reinforced.

Why is the achievement of parity reinforc­
ing for children? First, it must be acknowl­
edged that it isn’t invariably reinforcing in all
areas of conduct, as legions of mortified par­
ents in restaurants and supermarkets can at­
test. However, one of the surest ways to opti­
mize one’s behavior in a novel situation is to
do what others do, and children quickly learn
to model their behavior after that of their el­
ders. Nonconformity is often punished with
staring, silence, or ridicule. The contingen­
cies for achieving parity in verbal behavior
are doubtless subtle, but the embarrassment
of those who stutter, lisp, or suffer from other
speech impediments suggests that they are
nonetheless powerful.

The implications of this source of rein­
forcement are profound. A staple criticism of
behavioral interpretations of the acquisition
of language, by linguists and cognitive psy­
chologists, is that the reinforcing practices of
verbal communities do not seem to be ade-

quate to shape the many subtleties of verbal
behavior that children learn to respect. The
child who begs to be “tarried” may be car­
ried many hundreds of times without protest;
it is not the parents who insist that she get it
right. Moreover, as Brown and Hanlon
(1970) point out, parents tend to reinforce
the content of children’s utterances, not the
syntax or pronunciation. Despite Moerk’s
subsequent reanalysis of their data, revealing
many sources of reinforcement overlooked by
Brown and Hanlon (Moerk, 1983, 1990), the
critique is trenchant: Although people re­
spect countless verbal conventions, most of us
are unaware of many of them and are in no
position to tutor others about them. For ex­
ample, donate and gi,ve are roughly synony­
mous words. One might say, “I gave the mon­
ey to the Jimmy Fund,” or “I donated the
money to the Jimmy Fund.” But, although
one might say, “I gave the Jimmy Fund the
money,” one is unlikely to say, “I donated the
Jimmy Fund the money.” Our language is re­
plete with such anomalies. To argue that the
verbal community explicitly shapes respect
for such distinctions would be fatuous. The
exquisite subtlety of our verbal repertoires is
shaped by the contingencies of automatic re­
inforcement of which Skinner spoke; there
are countless such contingencies and they are
optimally arranged. To the competent listen­
er, a deviation from parity is instantly detect­
ed; one need not wait for the lumbering ma­
chinery of social reinforcement to swing into
action. Identifying units of listener behavior
that are relevant to cadence, intraverbal
frames, and the other dimensions of syntax
remains a formidable problem, but one that
is within the scope of the kind of interpreta­
tion pioneered by Skinner and extended
here by Horne and Lowe. (See Donahoe &
Palmer, 1994, pp. 312-319, for a fuller treat­
ment of this theme.)

The foregoing analysis does not weaken
Horne and Lowe’s thesis, but it suggests that
their interpretation of language development
resorts more frequently than necessary to social
reinforcers. Second, it suggests that a new mem­
ber needs to be added to their family of effects
of a speaker’s behavior on him- or herself.

JOURNAL OF APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS 1973, 6, 209-217 NUMBER 2 (SUMMER 1973)

SOCIAL CONTROL OF FORM DIVERSITY AND THE EMERGENCE
OF NEW FORMS IN CHILDREN’S BLOCKBUILDING1

ELIZABETH M. GoETZ AND DoNALD M. BAER2

UNIVERSI1Y OF KANSAS

The blockbuilding behavior of three preschool girls was analyzed in terms of the forms
manifest in any completed block construction, and found to contain few different forms
in baseline sessions. Social reinforcement, given contingent on the production of any
form not previously constructed within the current session (i.e., every first appearance of
any form within a session was reinforced but no subsequent appearances of that form
within that session were), increased the number of different forms built per sessions.
Social reinforcement, given for all second and later appearances within the session, de­
creased the number of different forms built per session. Furthermore, it was found that
new forms (forms never seen before in the child’s total prior sequence of blockbuilding
sessions) emerged at higher rates during periods of reinforcement of different forms
(first appearances) than during periods of baseline or reinforcement of same forms (sec­
ond and later appearances).

Virtually every nursery, preschool, and day
care center is equipped with a collection of
blocks, usually incorporating a variety of shapes
and sizes. Use of these blocks is ordinarily a
frequent activity of the majority of preschool
children, and such play is widely believed to be
educational, contributing to the child’s concepts
of space, form, mathematics (cf. Cuisenaire
rods), balance, leverage, and visual esthetics.
The possibility of such a contribution does not
appear to have been subjected to experimental
analysis and verification, probably because the

1A preliminary version of this study has been pub­
lished in A New Direction fM Education: Behavior
Analysis, Vol. I, edited by E. A. Ramp and B. L.
Hopkins, (Lawrence: University of Kansas Printing
Service, 1971). Supported in part by the University
of Kansas Center for Research in Early Childhood
Education, in association with the National Program
for Research in Early Childhood Education,
CEMREL, Inc., and the U. S. Office of Education.
(Grant numbers OEC 3-7-070706-3118 and OEC
0-70-4152(607}). We thank Ms. Susan Young, Mr.
Charles Burns, and Mr. Lawrence Russell for assis­
tance in obtaining the measurements.

2Reprints may be obtained from either author,
Department of Human Development, University of
Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 66044.

outcomes are not well specified in objectively
measurable behavioral terms. Even without an
empirical basis, though, it might well be guessed
that if blockbuilding were to yield such a
contribution, the block play itself would need
to be diverse rather than limited, repetitive, or
stereotyped. If the guess is a good one, then
diverse block play becomes a behavioral goal in
itself. Significantly, it is one that can readily be
given behavioral definition and thereby be sub­
jected to experimental programming, such as
by external reinforcement contingencies. If the
guess is not a good one, the deliberate develop­
ment of diverse blockbuilding may nevertheless
be taken as an experimental goal, so as to ask,
if it is developed, what else results? The present
study was undertaken to demonstrate the possi­
bility of reinforcing an objectively specifiable
aspect of children’s blockbuilding that would
yield results that might readily be labelled
diverse or (less readily, no doubt} even creative.
To the extent that such behavior is valued in
itself, these procedures then contribute to an
educational technology capable of producing it;
to the extent that the value of such behavior is
questioned, these procedures contribute to the

209

210 EUZABETH M. GOETZ and DONALD M. BAER

possibility of experimental examination of any
other results of its deliberate development.

METHOD

Setting

The study took place in a university preschool
classroom, specifically in the blockbuilding area
of the classroom ( characterized by a clear
expanse of flat floor bordered by shelves con­
taining the blocks). Each subject was invited by
the teacher to play with the blocks in this area,
alone with her and an observer, stationed a few
feet away. These invitations were made every
few days, and were invariably accepted. The
blockbuilding session took place during a time
of day when the block area was free of all other
children (who were engaged in curricular ac­
tivity outdoors). The session continued until the
child said she was finished or until all the blocks
available had been used and their rearrange­
ment had stopped, and the child agreed when
the teacher asked, “Are you finished?”. Usually,
the child made a single construction per session;
occasionally, several separate constructions were
made in a session, in which case all were con­
sidered in the data analysis of that session.

Subjects

Three girls, each 4-yr old, had little else in
common apart from an absence of well-devel­
oped blockbuilding skills. This deficit had been
remarked on informally by the classroom staff
during the months of school preceding the study,
and was formally examined in a baseline period
at the outset of the study. Staff comments
emphasized that these girls’ blockbuilding efforts
were either devoid of construction ( the blocks
merely being laid out in like-shaped or like­
sized groups), or primitive (characterized by
repetition of the same structure–e.g., the same
“casde”-in every successive construction). One
subject came from a low-income family; the
other two represented highly enriched, intellec­
tually and culturally stimulating family situ­
ations.

Behavior Definitions and Recording

Child behaviors. The basic child behaviors of
blockbuilding were defined according to their
products, block forms. In general, form referred
to various uses of two or more blocks to create a
specified shape or function. Specifically, an
arbitrary but frequently seen 20 such forms were
defined, as listed in Table 1. Most of these
forms could be constructed from a wide variety
of blocks; only a few are defined in terms of
specific pieces (“circles”, “S”, “X”, and “inter­
face”). Note that some of these definitions re­
quire that the block collection contain rec­
tangular solids of various length-width-thickness
ratios and arc-shaped and V-shaped pieces, as
well as the more familiar cubes.

A form diversity score was defined as the
number of these 20 forms appearing at least
once in any session’s construction(s).

A new forms score was defined as the number
of these 20 forms appearing in a given session’s
construction that had not appeared in any
prior construction by that child (in previous
sessions of blockbuilding) recorded within the
study. The new forms measure was not scored
for the child’s first block construction(s) in the
first session of the study, in that all forms ap­
pearing in that session would have to be con­
sidered new. Instead, the number of forms
appearing in the first construction(s) of the first
session of the study was taken as the child’s
baseline of forms; new forms were then con­
sidered forms other than those and were scored
from the second session’s construction(s) on.

Recording of each construction was done
photographically with a Polaroid camera. A
series of photographs was taken of each ses­
sion’s construction(s), from all sides and angles
necessary for complete display of its structure.
(The use of a Polaroid camera was considered
important, in that each photograph could be
examined for adequacy of exposure, focusing,
scope, and clarity almost immediately; deficient
ones then could be replaced or augmented by
additional photographs before the construction

211 FORM DIVERSITY AND NEW FORMS

Table 1

Definition of 20 Block Forms

FENCE: any two or more blocks placed side by side
in contiguity; if not contiguous, then any three or
more blocks placed at regularly spaced intervals
in a straight line.

STORY: any two or more blocks placed one atop
another, the upper block(s) resting solely upon the
lower.

RAMP: a block leaned against another, or a tri­
angular block placed contiguous to another, to sim­
ulate a ramp.

PILLAR: any story in which the lowest block is at
least twice as tall as it is wide.

POST: any story in which the lowest block is at
least twice as wide and half as rall as the upper
block(s).

TOWER: any story of two or more blocks, each of
which is at least twice as tall as it is wide.

ROOF: two or more slat-shaped blocks placed flat
and side by side atop at least two supports.

FLOOR: an inverted roof.
BALANCE: any story in which the upper block 1s

at least four times as wide as the lower.
ELABORATED BALANCE: any balance in which

both ends of the upper block contain additional
blocks.

ENCLOSURE: any arrangement of fences which
encloses an open area, with or without “gate”.

SUBDIVISION: two or more enclosures in con­
tiguity with at least one common fence.

ARCH: any placement of a block atop two lower
blocks not in contiguity.

STORIED ARCH: an arch built atop another arch.
ADJUNCT: two or more forms connected by a

fence; at least one of the forms must be an en­
closure, subdivision, or roof.

CIRCLE: arrangement of four arc-shaped blocks in
contiguity to form a circle.

“S”: arrangement of four arc-shaped blocks in con­
tiguity as two half-circles to simulate an s.

“X”: arrangement of two V-shaped blocks in con­
tiguity to simulate an X.

INTERFACE: arrangement of any two blocks with
curved contours to fit precisely together, such as
circle into hole of doughnut-shaped block, or half­
circle into arc-shaped block.

SIMULATION: a construction of blocks which re­
sembles a real-life object and is explicitly labelled
by child as such, usually a building, boat, or
swimming pool.

was dismantled). These photographs were taken
after the child had left the setting; the camera
was not in evidence during the blockbuilding,
and the child was presumably unaware of the
fact of photographic recording.

Two judges independently examined each
series of photographs, counting the number of
forms appearing at least once in the series
representing the session’s construction. Their
agreement in this counting of form diversity
was compared and found to be 100% over all
sessions of the study. In that the new forms
score was derived directly from these counts
( comparing the identities of the forms found in
a given construction to those found in all
previous constructions), there was similarly
100% agreement between the judges on that
score as well.

The duration of each session was recorded by
the observer with a stopwatch. The session was
defined as beginning when the first block was
set down, and as ending either when the child

said it was or when the child replied affirma­
tively to a teacher question about completion.

Teacher behaviors. An observer silently
watched the blockbuilding interaction from a
few feet away and recorded teacher behavior
and its contingency with the child’s production
of forms. Specifically, the observer recorded each
successive new form built by the child in that
day’s construction, whether the teacher attended
to that form production or not, whether the at­
tention was enthusiastic and approving, and
the duration of the session. These records were
used primarily as a check on the teacher’s
efficiency in carrying out the social contingencies
required by the experimental design, rather than
as a direct measure of the child’s behaviors in
producing forms. (The photographs were pre­
ferred as likely to yield higher accuracy, in that
they could be examined at leisure many times
over, whereas the observer was required to judge
all blockbuilding behaviors immediately as they
occurred). In addition, the teacher herself main-

212 ELIZABETH M. GOETZ and DONALD M. BAER

tained similar records, as the blockbuilding
proceeded. Comparison of the teacher’s records
and the observer’s showed agreement on 95%
of the events recorded, over the study, and also
showed that 95% of the teacher’s attention was
supplied in the contingencies required by the
experimental design, across the study.

Procedures

Baseline: no reinforcement. During the first
three to five sessions (varying with the subject),
the teacher sat by the child as she built with the
blocks, watching closely but quietly, displaying
neither criticism nor enthusiasm about any
particular use of the blocks. At the end of each
baseline session, the teacher expressed her ap­
preciation of the child’s total effort and con­
ducted her back to the rest of the classroom
group (usually in the play yard outside), and
then returned to photograph the construction(s).
Baseline sessions were continued until inspection
of the child’s daily form diversity scores showed
a stable enough level to justify experimental
programming. (The new forms score was not
considered).

Reinforcement of different forms. After the
baseline sessions, the teacher began a program
of social reinforcement of new forms. In these
sessions, the teacher remarked with interest,
enthusiasm, and delight every time that the
child placed and/or rearranged blocks so as to
create a form that had not appeared previously
in that session’s construction(s). (The form might
well have appeared in any previous session’s
construction(s), but it would be reinforced in
this session nevertheless). In other words, the
teacher reinforced every first appearance of any
form within the current session but no subse­
quent appearances of that form within that
session. The content of the teacher’s remarks
was designed to accomplish descriptive rein­
forcement: that is, they often indicated the
dimension to be reinforced, such as, “Oh, that’s
very nice-that’s different!”. These procedures
were continued for four or five sessions until
clear evidence of increasing form diversity was

obtained, at which point the next experimental
condition was implemented. (The new forms
score was not considered).

Reinforcement of same forms. Experimental
control of the increasing form diversity score
was attempted by reversal of the direction of
the social reinforcement contingency employed.
Thus, for the next two to four sessions, the
teacher continued to display interest, enthusiasm,
and delight, but only at those times when the
child placed and/or rearranged a block so as
to create a repetition of a form already apparent
in that session’s construction(s). (This form need
not have appeared in any previous session’s
construction(s); so long as it had appeared
earlier in this session’s construction(s), it would
be reinforced.) Thus, no first usage of a form in
a session was reinforced, but every second usage
of that form and every usage thereafter within
the session was. Again the content of praise was
descriptive: it specified the dimensions (same­
ness) being reinforced (e.g., “How nice-an­
other arch!”). These sessions were continued
until a clear decrease in form diversity was
seen. (As ever, the new forms score was not
considered).

Resumption of reinforcement of different
forms. To conclude the experimental analysis
and leave each child with the desired high level
of diversity, reinforcement of different forms
was resumed and continued for three to five
sessions, until high levels of form diversity
were seen. Procedures during this condition
were identical to those used in the previous con­
dition of reinforcement of different forms, i.e.,
only first appearances of any form within the
current session were reinforced.

Number of blocks to be used. The first two
subjects, Sally and Kathy, were free to use any
number of blocks, many or few, for each con­
struction. In fact, each girl tended to use a
number of blocks roughly correlated with her
form diversity score, across constructions. While
the correlation was not high, it did allow the
possibility that the increasing form diversity
scores associated with reinforcement of different

213 FORM DIVERSITY AND NEW FORMS

n – NO REINFORCEMENT
D – REINFORCE ONLY DIFFERENT FOAMS
S- REINFORCE ONLY SAME FORMS

2

0

10

SALLY J
\

0″‘1———————

IL.
0

20

KATHY

MARY

•
• •

I

:,
z-

10

••
o,_____________________

COOSTRUCTIONS
Fig. I. The form diversity scores of three children in the course of block-building training. Initial points,

labelled as n’s, represent scores produced when reinforcement was programmed only for different (non­
repetitive) forms; and points labelled as S’s represent scores produced when reinforcement was programmed
only for repetition of the same forms used previously that session .

214 ELIZABETH M. GOETZ and DONALD M. BAER

forms could represent a chance outcome of the
increased opportunity to display different forms
when using many blocks. Consequently, Mary’s
procedures were conducted as described above,
but with one added element: Mary was told
that she must use all of the blocks (53 10

number) each session. Invariably she did.

RESULTS

Form diversity. Each child’s form diversity
score, for each experimental session, is shown
in Figure 1. It is apparent that the social con­
tingencies applied effectively controlled the
development of form diversity: each child
showed appreciable increases from her baseline
(no reinforcement) levels during the two periods
of reinforcement of different forms; and during
the interpolated condition of reinforcement of
same forms, each child’s form diversity de­
creased toward her baseline range.

New forms. Each child’s new forms score, for
all sessions after the first (which was used to
define old forms for all later sessions), is shown
in Figure 2, cumulatively. That is, each bar
represents the number of new forms displayed
by the child so far in her sessions, since the
first session. (The number of “new” forms seen
in her first session was of course identical to
the first point in each graph of Figure 1.) The
increment each bar shows over the immediately
preceding bar is thus the number of new forms
that emerged in that session. Figure 2 shows
that the emergence of new forms was largely
restricted to periods in which different forms
were being reinforced. Only three exceptions
appear: Sally, in her second baseline session
(first bar in Figure 2), showed one new form,
and in her third session, another new form;
Mary in her second baseline session (first bar in
Figure 2), showed four. By contrast, Sally
showed nine new forms during periods of rein­
forcement of different forms, and Mary dis­
played 14 during these periods. In Kathy’s case,
her 16 new forms emerged only during periods
of reinforcement of different forms. In no child’s

study did new forms appear during the period
of reinforcement of same forms. On the average,
across the three children, the rate of emergence
of new forms during periods of reinforcement
of different forms was 1.5 new forms per session;
the rate of emergence of new forms during
periods of baseline or reinforcement of same
forms was 0.33 per session. These figures ex­
clude the first baseline session, as required by
the definition of the new forms score.

Session durations. The mean duration of
blockbuilding sessions was 16 min in Sally’s
case, 19 min in Kathy’s, and 9 min in Mary’s.
However, when Sally was receiving reinforce­
ment for different forms, her mean duration was
23 min; in conditions of baseline and reinforce­
ment of same forms, her mean duration was 9
min. The comparable mean durations for Kathy
were 22 min and 12 min, respectively; and for
Mary, 10 min and 8 min. Thus, in general, per­
formance during reinforcement of different
forms required more time than during baseline
or the reinforcement of same forms.

DISCUSSION

The three children of this study showed in­
creasing form diversity when they received
descriptive reinforcement for creating different
forms, and decreasing form diversity when repe­
tition of similar forms was descriptively rein­
forced. Thus, the teacher techniques implicit
in descriptive reinforcement were functional in
the analysis of this behavior of preschool chil­
dren, as they have been in many other studies
(e.g., Baer and Wolf, 1968).

Sally and Kathy were free to use many blocks
or few for each construction, but Mary was re­
quired to use all the 5 3 blocks in each construc­
tion. Mary’s results thus represent the number
of different forms achieved per 5 3 blocks in
each session, and cannot represent simply a
better chance to achieve many forms during the
condition when different forms were being rein­
forced. The similarity of Mary’s results to Sally’s
and Kathy’s suggests that the same process oper-

215 FORM DIVERSITY AND NEW FORMS

i No Reinforcement
Reinforce Only Different Forms
Reinforce Only Same Forms

SALLY20

”

~

~

I
t
i

~

20

..
12

I

4

0

KATHY

20 MARY

Successive Constructions

Fig. 2. The cumulative number of new forms ( forms never used before) produced by three children in
the course of block-building training. All scores represent cumulative increments above the score produced in
the first session ( not graphed). (The increment each bar shows over the preceding bar is thus the number of
new forms produced in that session.)

216 ELIZABETH M. GOETZ and DONALD M. BAER

ated in all three cases, independently of the
number of blocks used per construction.

It seems clear that diversity of response,
within this delimited sphere of activity, is readily
modified by simple, everyday reinforcement con­
tingencies. This is in agreement with the earlier
demonstrations by Maltzman (1960), who per­
formed a series of studies using verbal instruc­
tion and/or praise to increase original word
associations in college students, and by Pryor,
Haag, and O’Reilly (1969), who increased
never-before-observed body movements in two
porpoises, using food reinforcers. However, the
Maltzman studies displayed their effects as
changes in the mean scores of various subject
groups, which is certainly valuable but never­
theless actuarial. Creativity could have its great­
est meaning as a description of an individual’s
behavior. The Pryor et al. study showed a de­
liberate development of novel or original swim­
ming gymnastics in each of its two porpoises,
but had difficulty maintaining objective, reliable
measurement of these behaviors as they became
increasingly original, and did not offer an experi­
mental analysis of the procedures necessary to
this development. (Furthermore, creativity in the
porpoise, while intriguing, may reasonably be
doubted as an analogue of any similar process in
man or child).

The generality of the ease of training dis­
played in the present study of course remains
to be seen. Furthermore, whether or not to
attribute the effect simply to a reinforcement
mechanism remains to be seen as well. In this
study, the content of the verbal reinforcement
described the dimensions at issue, i.e., diversity
as opposed to similarity of forms to be con­
structed. Analysis of the separate functions of
description and reinforcement remains to be
accomplished, although its value is more theo­
retical than applied. It is likely that the functions
of description without praise and of praise with­
out description are different in different children.
In particular, it may well be supposed that for
some children, either will be sufficient without
the other, but that for other children, the mix

of the two will be more effective than either
alone. If so, then for applied purposes, a package
of the two is probably the best technique to
apply to children in general. The present study,
of course, testifies to the effectiveness of the
package, not to its components.

It may be noted that the package was applied
to form diversity directly, and only to form
diversity; change in the new forms score and in
session durations are thus collateral changes,
rather than direct results of the descriptive con­
tingencies applied to each new (or each same)
form. Nevertheless, these changes, taken to­
gether, suggest that children receiving descrip­
tive reinforcement merely for form diversity
within a session do display an emergence of new
forms across sessions, and take more time in
their blockbuilding as they do so. The descrip­
tive content of teacher praise specified “differ­
ence” (or “sameness”), but did not include any
instruction in how to construct any form. For
these reasons, the total pattern of behavior
change seen in these three children might well
be labelled “creative”, pursuant to a discussion
of the definitional problems inherent in the
term.

It has never been easy to define creativity (cf.
Crutchfield, 1965; Ghiselin, 1955; Guilford,
1959; Stein, 1953). However, one definition is
attractive on its face and also lends itself to
objective measurement and specific environ­
mental programming. This definition equates
creativity to novel or original behavior, i.e.,
behavior that the subject of study has not dis­
played before in his present setting, or behavior
that his group, class, or culture has not displayed
before in that setting (Maltzman, 1960; Pryor
et al., 1969). The phrase, “not displayed be­
fore”, implies a criterion of time: not displayed
since when? Clearly, this definition of creativity
confers maximum creativity on those behaviors
that have never been displayed before-mean­
ing never before within the limits of the ob­
server’s memory (or within the limits of his
recording system, or his culture’s recording
system). Less creativity is suggested for behaviors

217 FORM DIVERSITY AND NEW FORMS

that have not been displayed since more recent
times than that, such as “since yesterday”. Never­
theless, if the goal is to foster creativity through
direct training, a lesser criterion of creativity
may be necessary. To reinforce only those re­
sponses that have never been displayed before
may result in an extremely thin schedule of rein­
forcement, which will often be an ineffective
one. In the present study, the target of training
was behavior not displayed previously in that
session by the child. This short-term criterion of
creativity allowed a realistic reinforcement
schedule, and success with the short-term cri­
terion was associated with a modest collateral
development of behavior consistent with a long­
term criterion, as evidenced by the new forms
score. Thus, it may well be that a short-term
criterion, important on pragmatic grounds, may
result in long-term outcomes of both pragmatic
value and theoretical significance. Meanwhile,
the definition of “creativity” is no less arbitrary
than it has ever been, but one facet of that ar­
bitrariness has been subjected to experimental
analysis, within the obvious limits of this study.

REFERENCES

Baer, D. M. and Wolf, M. M. The reinforcement
contingency in preschool and remedial education.
In R. D. Hess and R. M. Baer, (Eds.), Early edu­
cation: Cu”ent theory, research, and practice.
Chicago: Aldine, 1968. Pages 119-130.

Crutchfield, R. S. Creative thinking in children: its
teaching and testing. In H. Brim, R. S. Crutch­
field, and W. Holtzman, (Eds.), Intelligence:
Perspectives. New York: Harcourt Brace and
World, 1965. Pages 33-64.

Ghiselin, B. The creative process. New York: New
American Library, 1955.

Guliford, J. P. Traits of creativity. In H. H. Ander­
son, (Ed.), Creativity and its cultivation. New
York: Harpers, 1959. Pp. 142-161.

Stein, M. E. Creativity and culture. Journal, of Psy­
chology, 1953, 36, 311-322.

Maltzman, I. On the training of originality. Psy­
chological Review, 1960, 67, 229-242.

Pryor, K. W., Haag, R., and O’Reilly, J. The crea­
tive porpoise: training for novel behavior. Jour­
nal, of the Experimental, Anatysis of Behavior,
1969, 12, 653-661.

Received 29 November 1971
(Revision requested 3 February 1972.)
(Final, acceptance 28 November 1972.)